Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) Announces Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.06 EPS

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday. The electronics maker reported $3.73 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.67 by $0.06, RTT News reports. The company had revenue of $1.01 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.03 billion. Acuity Brands had a net margin of 11.11% and a return on equity of 19.98%. Acuity Brands’s revenue was up 11.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $3.38 earnings per share.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:AYI opened at $266.79 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 2.98, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. The firm’s 50 day moving average is $297.70 and its two-hundred day moving average is $304.27. The firm has a market capitalization of $8.26 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.65, a PEG ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41. Acuity Brands has a 52 week low of $217.64 and a 52 week high of $345.30.

Acuity Brands Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 1st. Shareholders of record on Friday, April 18th will be given a $0.17 dividend. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.25%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, April 17th. Acuity Brands’s dividend payout ratio is presently 5.01%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

AYI has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. StockNews.com cut Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, March 1st. Oppenheimer lifted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. William Blair raised shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 2nd. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and lifted their price target for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. Finally, Robert W. Baird reduced their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $340.00 to $310.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, March 27th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Acuity Brands has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $330.60.

About Acuity Brands

Acuity Brands, Inc provides lighting, lighting controls, building management system, location-aware applications in the United States and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Acuity Brands Lighting and Lighting Controls (ABL); and the Intelligent Spaces Group (ISG). The ABL segment provides commercial, architectural, and specialty lighting solutions, as well as lighting controls and components for various indoor and outdoor applications under the A-Light, Aculux, American Electric Lighting, Cyclone, Dark to Light, eldoLED, Eureka, Gotham, Healthcare Lighting, Holophane, Hydrel, Indy, IOTA, Juno, Lithonia Lighting, Luminaire LED, Luminis, Mark Architectural Lighting, nLight, OPTOTRONIC, Peerless, RELOCWiring Solutions, and Sensor Switch.